Waterton-Glacier National Park

Tuesday June 27, 2006

“There’s nothing like a good night’s sleep, and that was nothing like a good night’s sleep.”
--Stephen Katz, as quoted by Bill Bryson in A Walk in the Woods

We couldn’t have been given a better cabin location at the St. Mary Cabin and Motor Inn. First, our cabin is right next to the short entrance road to the cabins, so everyone has to drive by to get in or out. It’s a gravel road, so it’s nice and loud. Also we’re right next to the summer help’s lodging, so they just love to play their music all night and make all sorts of noise. Finally, you know it’s a great cabin because we have ants crawling all over the place, though mostly in the bathroom. Any time you can go into the bathroom and kill 2-3 ants per visit, that’s just icing on the cake.

So needless to say I wasn’t real rested when the alarm went off this morning. (Oh, I didn’t even mention the birds…you know how birds love to be their noisiest right around dusk and dawn? Well, with the BIG SKY COUNTRY out here dusk lasts until about 10:30 pm, and starts around 4:30 am. And those birds just love to sing.) But we rolled out of bed around 8ish anyway and put on the hiking clothes and boots and drove up to Logan Pass again. Today we decided to do the Hidden Lake hike first thing, hoping that it would be less crowded than it was yesterday at 10:30 am. We got to the visitor center and trailhead around 8:30 am (not first thing, but the best we could do) and started off. Our guidebook said that the first part of the hike goes over a boardwalk and then climbs up a side of a mountain to get to an overlook of hidden lake after a couple of miles. Then it descends sharply to Hidden Lake. We had asked at the visitor’s center yesterday if the trail was open, and it was. What they didn’t tell us, and what we discovered when we started the hike, is that Logan Pass got an above average snowfall this past winter and the entire trail was over snow pack. Feeling like we were climbing Everest (without the lack of oxygen, freezing temperatures or sherpas, of course), we trekked up the side of the snow covered mountain for over an hour. Hiking up snow isn’t easy, though thankfully it was warm (over 70 degrees). Unfortunately that warmth starts to melt the top part of the snow on the trail and turn it to slush, so it ends up like hiking in sand, always slipping down a few inches for every foot forward you take. It’s also a strange sensation, wearing shorts and a t-shirt and still sweating while hiking over nothing but snow. After an hour or so we made it to the overlook where mostly-frozen Hidden Lake comes into view. It’s a nice view, and we were hoping to see some mountain goats (one of the hardest animals to catch in the wild, considering they usually live way up high on rocky mountains), but the views through our binoculars revealed nothing. After a short food break we decided not to take the hike down to Hidden Lake, as our legs felt like we’d already hiked 8 miles up that snow. We turned around and headed back, where almost instantly we ran into a group of people on their way up staring at the side of the mountain, way up the face. We found out that they had seen some mountain goats up there, but we had just missed them as they ducked behind some trees. Sage then spent the next 10 minutes staring intently with the binoculars, hoping they’d come out, but they never did. (I’m not convinced the other people saw anything except for some small snow banks.) Making the way down the snow field was much easier than going up. I actually found that running down was really easy. Not really running so much as jumping from step to step and letting your heel dig in a bit. It was almost like skiing down the side. (Speaking of skiing, we actually passed 2 people on the way up on skis, which would be the sweet way to come back down. I personally thought that I could have rented snow saucers to sled down for $5 a piece at the top and would have made a killing, though then someone probably would have sledded into a rock and busted open their head, and I’d be sued, and then I’d really have to find a job. But a sled would have been nice.)

So then, when we’re almost to the bottom we heard this huge CRACK, and then a big roar, and the crack and roar echoed all through the valley and around the mountains we were in. It lasted for about 10 seconds, and I thought immediately – Avalanche! We were almost to the visitor’s center so I went in and found out from a ranger that it wasn’t actually an avalanche. The Park Service was using dynamite to loosen and get rid of the snow pack on the trail that we wanted to hike yesterday, so that they can open it up soon. I think it was then I realized for certain that if the only way they can get a trail open is by using dynamite on the snow, than we’re definitely here a bit too early in the season. (And while I was talking to a ranger I heard this great snippet from a woman next to me, talking to another ranger. I guess her and her family wanted to see mountain goats, and I heard the ranger say that this time of the year they’re usually way up on the mountain and very hard to find. She then asked, “Well, is there a trail we can take to see them? Or can we view them from the road somewhere?” I soooooo wanted to turn to her and say, “Lady, you’re not in a freakin’ zoo! If you want to see mountain goats, get off your duff and climb a mountain!” Instead I left before hearing what the ranger’s response was, and I realized I could never work that job without fear of trying to smack sense into the people who come in.)

After the hike we had some time on our hands, and tried to figure out what to do. Another hike today was going to be tough (yeah, I know, we’re lame), so the plan we came up with was this: Go into the town of St. Mary, right outside the park, buy some chicken and potato salad, put it on ice in the cooler, then drive to St. Mary Lake and spend the rest of the afternoon by the water/in the water, reading books, soaking up the sun and the mountain landscape, and then having cold chicken and potato salad for dinner. Sage has been dying to have a cold chicken picnic ever since Rocky Mountain, but every time we try to plan a picnic around it, either we can’t find the chicken, or we can’t find the potato salad, or its raining, or something else comes up. Well, sure enough our plans would be foiled again. The town of St. Mary is small, and it looked like that the only supermarket in town either had a run on, or they haven’t had a truck delivery in a while. Half the shelves were empty, including all the cold and frozen shelves. Also there was caution tape all around the beer section and a sign that said, “No Alcohol Sales June 27”. This being a Tuesday, I doubt it was some blue law thing. Nevertheless this place made the Soviet Safeway in DC look like a Super Giant in Rockville. So no chicken there, but there was a pizza/café place next door. They had chicken tenders, but it wasn’t what Sage was looking for, so we ended up getting nothing. We still went down to the lake for some R&R, though. We brought our tailgating chairs with us and set up on the rocky beach. The flies almost immediately came out. They weren’t bad at first, but I guess word got out we were there and then they started swarming. I even moved my chair out into the lake to sit, hoping to get away, but no use. After swatting and killing my quota I had enough and we finally packed it all back up.

Thinking about what to do next, we both decided that a) It definitely is too early in the season to be at Glacier and we were sick of hiking on snow, and b) we weren’t sure that we could take 2 more nights in the ant-infested cabin. So I stopped at the registration desk on the way back to the cabin and found out that there was only a small penalty fee for leaving a day early, so we told them that we’d be checking out tomorrow instead of Thursday. We still plan on heading up to the Many Glacier area tomorrow morning and hopefully the Grinnell Glacier trail isn’t under snow too. If it is, we’ll try to find something else quick, and then we’ll begin our drive up to Canada a day early. We saw a place on the map in Alberta called “Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Interpretive Center”, and figured this place has got to be worth a stop.

After getting back to our cabin we showered and relaxed and got some reading in that I couldn’t get in back at the beach. (My book is covered in fly goop, by the way.) Around 3:00 pm we decided to drive over to the west side of the park again and have dinner. It’s a long drive (takes over an hour) but it’s got great viewing of the mountains so we figured it wouldn’t be too annoying. We were rewarded right away with our actions because not far from Logan Pass we saw a mountain goat perched on a ledge near the road! We were able to find a pull off out of traffic and we got our binoculars out and got some good viewing of him. We were thrilled to be able to see one; we really didn’t think we would, considering that the ranger said earlier that they’re usually pretty high up the mountains. Back in the car we drove the rest of the way to West Glacier to get some gas and to stop at the Alberta Visitor’s Center that’s in town. Those Canadians, always thinking ahead – what a great idea to put their visitor center in Glacier. We got some more info on Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, so we’re definitely going to hit that (sorry for the pun) tomorrow. The restaurant choices in West Glacier didn’t appeal too much to us, so we decided on eating at Jammer Joe’s Pizza and Pasta, just inside the park’s west entrance. We found out that Jammer Joe’s is named after a Jammer driver whose name, oddly enough, is Joe. Jammers are these retro-fitted buses that are used as tour buses along the Going to the Sun Road. It’s got an open roof so you can see all the high sights, and I think it’s mostly used for people too intimidated by the tight corners and 2,000 feet cliffs that the road offers. My dinner sucked, but we were treated to a brush with greatness: Jammer Joe himself sat down with his wife right next to us! Oh, to be in the presence of such greatness, I’m at a loss for words.

So we started our long drive back to the east side of the park, and when we got close to the spot where we saw the mountain goat earlier Sage told me to pull off at a big parking area. No sooner as we pull in to park we see, right in front of us, a family of 4 mountain goats, including a baby goat! For the next 40 minutes or so we watched the family munch on flowers, the mother bluff a charge at a woman getting too close to take a picture, the group cross the road for better grass eating, 2 more mountain goats trying to join the foursome (which wasn’t taken kindly to by the mother), and then they crossed the road again to climb a steep snow bank. We got some great pictures and felt great after such a treat. We also saw, way across the valley, 2 more mountain goats, including one that was absolutely enormous. By this time the sun was down behind the mountain and we started getting really cold so we pushed on back to the cabin. We arrived around 8:00 pm to find the ant situation had gotten out of control. Whereas yesterday and this morning we’d find 1 or 2 every time we went to the bathroom, now we were killing 10-20, with them crawling all over the walls and the shower curtain…I’m SOOOO glad we’re not staying here past tonight. Even tonight I’m going to have the heebie-jeebies, itching at every little thing I feel on my body.